


The Ways We Grieve

by HerHighnessThePrincess



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Alcoholism, Assassination Attempt(s), Blood, Dehydration, Dissociation, EDNOS, Fainting, Gen, Grieving, Head Injury, Nightmares, PTSD, Self Harm, Stabbing, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, all of these are spread out over chapters so no one is getting all of this dumped on them, at all, but none of them are having a good time, physical assault, the major character death is zane because he technically died, whatsoever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25009375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerHighnessThePrincess/pseuds/HerHighnessThePrincess
Summary: After Zane's death, none of the ninja are coping well.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36





	1. Jay

**Author's Note:**

> I watched season 3 for the first time and it broke my heart, so here comes this abomination about how each of the ninja deals with loss. 
> 
> General warnings for this fic: grief & mourning, blood, head injuries, unhealthy coping mechanisms, alcoholism, EDNOS, dissociation, self-inflicted dehydration, fainting, suicidal ideation, multiple types of self-harm, physical assault, swearing, underground fighting clubs, knives, stabbing, assassination attempt, PTSD, nightmares, underage drinking.
> 
> Trigger warnings for this chapter: Nightmares, PTSD, underage drinking, alcoholism, grief & mourning, unhealthy coping mechanisms. 
> 
> This is Jay’s chapter.

_ The world was cold. It was so cold. Jay tried to recoil from it, but it was everywhere, ice-cold and freezing him inside and out. Jay had no idea where it came from- _

_ Wait. Jay knew exactly where it came from. He’d had this dream before.  _

_ Now he just wanted to get it over with. _

_ Jay strode forward, moving past the vague illusions of his friends- _ former _ friends and into the snowy hellscape. He kept on walking. It took far longer than it had in real life. _

_ As soon as he came across a metal arm, he knew the dream was coming to a close. He didn’t bother to inspect it.  _

_ He came across a leg next. Then an arm. Then the other leg. Then the torso. _

_ Jay trembled as he stepped forward a couple more times. No matter how many times it happened, Jay wouldn’t ever get used to it. He didn’t deserve to. _

_ He came across something buried in the snow. Jay glared at the sky where snow was still falling down. Fluffy and soft. Not sharp and jagged. Unlike what was buried in the snow. _

_ Jay reached down and brushed the snow off of cold metal. It had always felt like skin in reality, he knew. His hands trembled when he lifted it out of the frozen ground. _

_ The faceplate was stark white, the only things noticeable on it being the soft curve of a fake cheekbone, the beginnings of pale (dead) lips, and snow white eyelashes which concealed an eye. _

_ And then the eye blinked open. _

\---

Jay woke up with a strangled yell, hands clamped tightly over his mouth. He was sweating despite the fact that he was only wearing his pajamas, any and all blankets, stuffed toys, and mattresses long since tossed off his bed. 

Some of the sweat on his face felt like tears. He refused to acknowledge that they might be.

As soon as he managed to calm himself down, Jay took a glance at the clock on his bedside table.  _ Please be morning, please be morning… _

No such luck. The clock read 4:15, and the outside sky showed no sign of light. 

Jay knew he wasn't going back to sleep. He never did, after nightmares like that. He had had that dream so many times that he knew exactly what was going to happen in it. He couldn't change it. No matter what he did in the dream, no matter where he walked, he always came across the same scene.

Jay's hands had clenched into fists as his sides, he noticed, the short fingernails digging bloody crescents into his palms. He was trembling now, a mixture of rage, pain, grief and misery building inside him.

Why was he still having that nightmare? He had accepted Zane's death, he had months ago. Sure, he didn't like to think about it, or talk about it, but he had accepted it. So why was he still having nightmares?

Jay blinked rapidly, trying to get tears out of his eyes. He had done enough crying. It hadn't brought Zane back or made him feel any better. Not that he deserves to feel better.

_ You're a stupid idiot, Jay Walker. If you had just been a little better, worked harder, smarter, faster, he might not have… _

Jay cut off that thought. He has wondered about it before, of course. How all of them could have done a little bit better, made smarter decisions, been less foolish and carefree-

Zane might not have had to take the fall.

If any of them had known what was coming, he was sure that they wouldn't have let it happen. It was useless hating people for stuff they couldn't have seen coming.

But he did. He hated Kai for being stupid and arrogant and allowing himself to get caught. He hated Cole for suddenly deciding that it was worth breaking up their friendship over a girl. He hated Nya for leading them on. He hated Lloyd for walking straight into the Overlord's cage.

He even blamed Zane. He blamed him for acting like he wasn't worth just as much as they were. He blamed him for allowing his heart to become half of what it was for a girl they hadn't seen since the funeral. 

He hated him for dying.

Most of all, Jay hated himself. He was the mechanic on the team, the repair guy. He was supposed to be able to fix things.

He hadn't been able to fix Zane. He had tried, of course. But he couldn't work with half a faceplate and some pieces of scrap metal. But he couldn't bring Zane back.

It had taken them a week to accept. It had taken Kai breaking down and  _ screaming _ at them that Zane wasn't coming home, that even if they did get his body back there was no way to get him back, that they should give up and that they had failed to save him, it took all of that in order to accept it.

That had inspired an hour long screaming match with Cole. By the end of it both of them were red-faced, with tears streaming down their faces. Kai had called Cole a "useless leader" and Cole had hit him for that. 

The screaming match had ended when Kai stormed off to his room, threw a couple necessities into a bag, and then left the Monastery. They hadn't seen him since then.

Cole had left the day after that. It had taken a day more of Jay staring down at Zane's broken faceplate to leave.

He hadn't looked back. But before he had gone out the door, Nya had slapped a phone in his hand and told him that all of their numbers were in it, and that he could just call when needed. She had done the same with the others.

Jay hadn't touched it. He didn't want to ever see any of them again. So far as he was concerned, they were (himself included), a bunch of fuck-ups who had been too stupid to stop the best of them from dying.

He still missed them, though. How could he not? Regardless of how things had ended, they had been his best friends for over a year. He missed Kai's stupid antics that he would join in on, he missed pseudo-parenting Lloyd, he missed hanging out with Cole and feeling like nothing would bring them apart, he missed going on dates with Nya and feeling like he was on Cloud Nine. 

He missed Zane so much. He missed his strange voice and mannerisms, his occasional quirks and misunderstandings over human interactions. He missed convincing Zane to make cookies at 2 am and listening to him ramble on about how unhealthy chocolate was while pouring dozens of chocolate chips in himself. He missed his little half smiles and his companionship and his genuine friendship.

Genuine. Something Jay wasn't nowadays. He was so fake that he needed makeup all over his face, a suit which emphasized muscles he didn't have anymore, and a haircut so gelled up he wondered how Kai had put up with it everyday just to do his damn job. 

Jay shook his head weakly, feeling a couple of stray tears fall before he wiped them off his face with his hand. Enough reminiscing about the past. He had to do something, even if he wasn't required to be up until at least three hours from now. Just to take his mind off things.

Jay changed into more normal clothes than either his pajamas or his work suit, putting on a simple tank top and his boxers. He sat at his desk for a couple of seconds before he grabbed his laptop, opened it up, and got to work.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of sending emails to various people on the show, ideas for gigs he could show up at, various sponsorships he could do, etcetera. He was by far the most public of the former ninja now, and with his playful and family-friendly all he had to do was politely request to be somewhere or do something and people would fall all over themselves to help him. No matter what it was.

That was how he had started receiving gifts. In an interview he had made a comment about missing his stuffed animals from his childhood home, and fifty stuffed animals had arrived in the mail. He had expressed gratitude for it, called a few fans out by name, and the gifts had never stopped. 

That was how he got his first bottle of wine. When he got it he stored it in the back of his pantry, planning to either throw it out when he moved, leave it there forever, or maybe cracking it open when he turned 21. 

That hadn't happened. It had been a particularly stressful day at work already, and then he had caught his co-workers drinking at work. One thing had led to another, and before Jay knew it he was already three beers in at a bar. He had stumbled home later that night, swallowed half the wine in one go, and threw the bottle against the wall.

He hadn't stopped since then. Almost every day he'd have a beer before going to the show, and then at least one more before bed. 

It wasn’t an addiction. He could stop anytime.

He also didn’t wanna stop. It made him feel better about everything. It made the world fuzzy and warm and sleepy, and it made the nightmares better. He didn’t even mind waking up and vomiting his guts out just to fill them up with the burning liquid again.

So Jay had gotten some alcohol to keep at his apartment. He was going through the first bottle of the stuff when his cellphone rang.

Jay jumped, some whiskey sloshing out of his glass and onto the table, thankfully avoiding his laptop. He glanced at the phone on the table, and felt his heart stop.

The number wasn’t a contact on his phone. But he knew it by heart. His parents had forced him to memorize it the day he left to become a ninja.

They hadn’t called him since he had been on the show. In fact, he hadn’t since before Zane died.

Jay all but ran to pick up his phone, almost falling on his face as he pressed the “receive” button. He pressed his ear to the phone as his mom’s voice came through it.

“Hi honey!”

Jay gave a weak sniffle. He had missed his mom’s voice so much. His dad came on next, rambling about something involving some garbage he had picked up. 

Jay didn’t really pay attention to the conversation, only giving small responses and noises when the conversation lulled. He never really needed to-his parents had always been capable of carrying a conversation by themselves for as long as he had known them. With every word spoken, the small ache of loneliness in his chest grew smaller and smaller.

The calm kind of reverie Jay had fallen into was broken when his mom said, “Sweetie, would it be possible for you to visit us sometime? We know you have to be busy with your show and scheduling and everything, but it would be nice to see you again, even if only for a short while.”

Jay blanked at that. Not because it would be impossible, or because he didn’t want to. He would love to see his parents again, and with how large his influence was it would be possible to get at least a day with his parents. 

No, he couldn’t because his life would come crashing down. If he went back to his mom and dad, he wouldn’t ever leave. He would break down and cry about Zane, his former friends, the alcohol, everything. And then they would never let him go back to his life.

He couldn’t go back to being the useless junkyard boy. No matter what happened to him in this life, whether he went on to life-long stardom or was found dead in a ditch a day from now, he couldn’t be an unknown again.

“Honey?”

Jay grit his teeth in a mockery of a smile. And then he lied. “I’ll try to arrange something with my producer. It’ll be hard, but I think I can get us at least a day together.”

His parents' voices faded out into a strange sea of fuzziness as they said goodbye. As soon as the call was over Jay put the phone down and grabbed the bottle again, chugging down a swig as tears started to flow down his face.

What was he  _ doing _ ? He was lying to his parents. Whenever his parents were going to be expecting him, Jay knew he could make some kind of production disaster appear. A sudden reshoot, a pushy manager, lost film reels, something. And his parents would buy it, hook-line-and-sinker. Because they trusted him.

Tears started to roll down Jay’s face as he gripped the bottle tighter. He really was a pathetic person. Lying to his own parents because he couldn’t bear to live without fame. Without a lifestyle that would help him forget.

But he would enjoy it while he could, before it all came crashing down around him. So he took another swig of the bottle to try to drown his memories.


	2. Cole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the Cole chapter!
> 
> General warnings for this fic: grief & mourning, blood, head injuries, unhealthy coping mechanisms, alcoholism, EDNOS, dissociation, self-inflicted dehydration, fainting, suicidal ideation, multiple types of self-harm, physical assault, swearing, underground fighting clubs, knives, stabbing, assassination attempt, PTSD, nightmares, underage drinking.
> 
> Trigger warnings for this chapter: grief & mourning, unhealthy coping mechanisms, EDNOS, dissociation, self-inflicted dehydration, fainting, blood, head injuries, swearing, PTSD, nightmares.
> 
> Please read with caution!

Cole hated breaks. Like yeah, he got why management had to give them out and why other people enjoyed them, but he didn’t. He hated not having a distraction.

Cole wiped sweat off his brow, ignoring the weakness of his muscles and how dry his mouth was, not yet going for his water bottle. He had never had any problems with heat before this job, but now every day he loathed stepping outside. It was blistering even to his darker skin, and made working so much more difficult when all he wanted to was drag himself to the shady part under a tree and collapse there.

He could hear his fellow coworkers talking somewhere in the distance, but he didn’t particularly care for socializing so he didn’t pay attention or talk to them. He had tried in the past, but it was so easy to drift off into his own mind that he didn’t make any effort to connect with them.

He knew he was a popular topic of discussion. The Earth Ninja, part of the Ninja team which had broken up six months ago, who mysteriously showed up, asked for a job, and then kept to himself. He didn’t mind though, so long as none of them reported his presence to the press he was fine with it. And none of them bothered to care about him, which he was perfectly fine with.

It gave him plenty of time to think. About how he had failed as a leader, as a friend, as a warrior. 

He had failed so bad someone had died on his watch.

He was a useless leader.

It had just taken Kai yelling at him for him to realize it, but now it was stuck in his head. The other boy might not have meant it (or he might have, Kai was mean when he was angry and grieving), but he was right. It had been hard to accept it, but once he had, it had given him some semblance of peace.

Not much though. He was still plagued by nightmares, by what ifs, by hypotheticals of how he could have changed things. He knew he could have. If he had just reached the Overlord before Zane had, he could have taken that particular blow. Like a leader should have. Lloyd might technically have been the leader of the ninja, but Cole was the oldest and the former leader. He wasn’t letting the youngest of them take the fall for his mistakes.

No, he had just let Zane take the fall for his avoidable mistakes. His many, many, mistakes. Like letting his team mess around, arguing with Jay over the most stupid things, and not killing the Overlord the first time they fought him.

There were so many ways things could have gone better. But they hadn’t, so there was no point in reminiscing about it. 

Lumberjacking helped take his mind off things. It was hard work even for someone with super strength, as well as being dangerous. He had to handle an axe every day as well as avoiding being crushed by falling trees and avoiding the heavy machinery around the work site. The work needed to be focused on to the point where he couldn’t think about anything else. Despite the fact that it made his head and body ache all the time, it was perfect work, and it also paid enough for him to live on. In a shitty apartment, but still.

Cole liked his life now. It was dull and lonely, but also busy. It felt like a fitting punishment. It had the additional benefit of nobody caring about him. He had no friends or family to check up on him.

Just a boss, of course.

“Your performance has been dropping, Cole.”

Cole let his head fall down from where he had been looking at the sky. “Excuse me?”

His manager arched his eyebrow. “I believe you heard me.”

Cole groaned, letting his arms uncross and assuming an unthreatening stance as best he could. “In what particular areas?”

His manager sighed in relief, clearly happy that the considerably stronger Earth Ninja was being reasonable. “Well, just in general. You’ve been chopping fewer trees down, piling fewer logs into the pile, not operating the machinery, acting sluggish around camp…”

His voice trailed off, and Cole stared blankly at the sky again. It was so much easier to just stop paying attention and caring. Staring up into the sun made his head ache worse than it already did, and his skin feel like it was burning off, but it was something to focus on, and it was peaceful. 

Fingers snapped in front of his face. “Are you even paying attention to me?”

Cole tried to focus on him and say something smart. He really did. But instead all that came out was a slurred, “Not really.”

His manager stared at him for a couple seconds. “Take the rest of the day off.”

Cole started. “What?”   
  


Something in his manager’s gaze was worried. “I said, take the rest of the day off. You’re clearly not feeling well.”

“Sir, I need this job. I-”

“You’ll still be getting paid, the truly absurd amount of work you did the first couple of months makes up for this past week,” his manager said. “Just fix whatever’s going on in your life.”

He started to walk away.

Cole made after the manager, desperate to get him to let Cole stay for the rest of the day. “No, sir, I need the distrac-”

Cole managed to trip over his own feet. On the ground underneath him was a shovel.

Cole’s head collided with the sharp point of the shovel, and everything went blurry. He was vaguely aware of more noise around him, of someone shaking his body, and of a dull pain followed by a stickiness on the side of his head, but he didn’t really care about any of it. His head was too fuzzy to care.

His gaze drifted up to the sky, where the sun sat, glaring down at him. The last thing he saw before his vision turned black was the light.

\---

_ Kai was standing right before him. He looked angry. Cole tried to think, to guess what his friend-former friend was angry about, but nothing came to mind. What could Kai be upset- _

_ Oh. He knew. And now he knew what was about to happen.  _

_ He could feel his own mouth moving, but he was powerless to stop it. He knew what he was saying, and he wanted to take it all back, but he couldn’t. _

_ Everything was muted, but he knew exactly what he and Kai were saying. Kai was attempting to get him to give up false hope that Zane was coming back, and he was furious at Kai for even suggesting that Zane was gone forever. Now, he knew better. He knew that Zane wasn’t coming back, that none of them were. Their relationship was far too broken for that.  _

_ Cole tried to stop himself. But the words came out of his mouth anyways. “Maybe if you hadn’t been a fucking idiot who let himself get captured, Zane would still be alive!” _

_ Kai responded equally viciously. “Maybe if you hadn’t been a useless leader, Zane wouldn’t have killed himself!” _ _   
  
_

_ Even though he was aware it was a mistake, Cole still saw red and felt the urge to swing at him. His dream self actually did, catching Kai on the side of his face.  _

_ In retrospect, he was so glad he hadn’t been angry enough to hit Kai with his full strength. He wouldn’t ever forgive himself if he had seriously hurt Kai. _

_ Kai in his memories recovered easily, but stared at Cole for a moment of stunned silence. Then he hurled himself forward, slamming Cole against the table, screaming words Cole couldn’t make out but still felt hurt by, all the same. _

_ Everything was fuzzy until he felt somebody shove their way between the two of them. Jay shoved the two of them apart, and Cole could see tears building in the other boy’s eyes. He was saying something, but everything was muted again and Cole couldn’t tell what he was saying. He remembered that it hurt, though.  _

_ With a disgusted look at him, Jay strode away, and Cole was left with Kai. He noticed with a pang of guilt that bruises were already beginning to spread across Kai’s arms and face, and there was a thin trickle of blood coming down from Kai’s temple.  _

_ There was a thick tension between them. Kai was standing stiffly, hands clenched at his sides, and Cole could feel the heat radiating off of him. Kai thought Cole was about to attack him again. _

_ Despite how much of a mistake he knew it was, his dream self still growled out, “Get out, Kai.” _

_ Kai stared at him for a long silence. Just before he turned on his heel and all but ran out of the room, he said, “Fuck you.” _

_ Kai disappeared behind the door. If Cole had known that would be the last time he would have seen his friend, he would have taken it all back, done anything to keep the team from fracturing into pieces.  _

_ But he didn’t do anything. He just let Kai walk out of his life. A day later, Cole would follow in his footsteps and leave as well. He knew Jay would walk out as well. _

_ The unbreakable ninja team, broken apart because of a fight. _

_ If Zane had still been alive, he would have been disappointed. _

\---

Cole opened his eyes to the sun-no, not the sun, a light hanging over his head. He blinked a couple of times until his vision cleared up, and he saw that it was a fluorescent light panel embedded into the ceiling above him. 

His head was throbbing violently, and Cole lifted his hand to it with a soft groan. It  _ hurt _ , with a kind of intensity he rarely felt. He’d never personally had a hangover, but he had seen his father go through them. He imagined they felt something like this.

“Oh, thank FSM you’re awake.”

Cole turned his head weakly. His manager was sitting by his head, his face held in his hands. He was pale, and looked stressed, with beads of sweat dripping down his face. “At least I don’t have to deal with a dead worker now.”

Cole blinked. “Wha-”

Oh. He remembered. At least vaguely. Sun, then falling, then pain, then more sun before finally everything went dark. He had fainted. Or blacked out. He didn’t really care for the distinction.

“Are you paying attention to me?”

Cole glanced over to the other man, who was staring at him with a pained look. “Not really, no.”   
  


His manager let out the most beleaguered sounding groan he had heard in a while, before glaring at him for a solid minute. It was a while before either of them spoke.

“You’re not going to…  _ do _ anything, are you?” His manager asked, the stress lines in his forehead evident. For a split second Cole was puzzled as to what he meant, but then he clarified. “You were injured on the worksite.”

Ah. They didn’t want him to sue. “I don’t want or need money all that much, sir.”

Cole hoped he could still call him that. He  _ really _ didn’t want to lose this job. It was one of the few things he had left. It was probably illegal to fire somebody for injuring themselves on a worksite, actually. 

Judging by his manager’s reaction, he wasn’t fired. “Then why do you have this job?”

Cole rolled his eyes. “You wouldn’t get it.”

He really hoped his manager didn’t get it. He didn’t like the idea of anyone going through what he was now dealing with.

His manager didn’t respond for quite some time. Cole’s eyes remained fixed on the light, on the fan, on various objects around the room. He deliberately looked at anything aside from the man right next to him.

Eventually his manager stood up. “You’re taking a week off. Can you get home by yourself?”

Again, Cole rolled his eyes. He wasn’t  _ so _ pathetic that he couldn’t get home by himself. “Yes sir, I can walk.”

“I couldn’t tell,” the other man said, acid coating his voice. “You can get out of here on your own time.” 

With that, he turned around and left.

Cole continued to stare at the ceiling until he decided to move, getting up from the bed with a groan. All of his things were on the chair to the right side of his bed, so he grabbed them before leaving.

He drifted off again on the walk home. His mind went everywhere and nowhere at the same time, thinking about everything possible while not really considering any of it. His trance only broke when he got to the door of his shitty apartment, and he let out a soft sigh as he fumbled with his keys.

“Home sweet home, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took an embarrassingly long amount of time to make. 2262 words.

**Author's Note:**

> Well there you have it. A solid 2351 words of angst. And it only gets worse from here with the others. Next up is Cole!


End file.
